1920 Harley Model F

[TechNoir]

Re: 1920 "F" Project

Hello folks. I have not done an update for a while because I seem to have had lots of things going on but nothing finished. However things are now coming together so first I will do a tank update.



Before that though I have a question. How much oil do you put in the crankcase from dry? Is 2 pumps of the hand pump correct?



Now the update.

As you may know the bike came with 3 sets of tanks. The original tanks are like swiss cheese so are not a viable prospect for repair. The 1916 tanks are not so bad although one needs repair it is not as bad as my original 1920 tanks. However I have put them away in the loft for now, if anyone wants them please pm me.

So that leaves the 2 red tanks. I had already taken the paint off one tank, here is a picture from earlier on in this thread



This tank was quite good but had some holes but these were confined to one area. So I decided to see if it could be fixed. I didnt have to worry about paint so I decided to take it apart. In case you were wondering how these tanks look like inside here is mine







The yellow stuff is the gum left from old petrol.

Here is the bad bit.



Here is everything cleaned up.




You might notice something in the bottom right corner of the above picture.

Thats because it is after a new piece has been welded in. I would like to say that I welded it but I am still very new to TIG so I got a friend who is a professional welder to do it because the metal is 22 gauge.




Here is the bit that was removed. The rest of the tank is fine.



Once I had re-soldered it back together I pressure tested it. I had a leak or 2 on a couple of soldered joints but they were easily fixed. Unfortunatly I didnt take any pictures of the re-assembly




Continued on next post due to a limit of 10 on number of pictures in a post

[TechNoir]

Re: 1920 "F" Project

Then I looked at the other red tank. It seemed OK but it had loads of old oil inside the oil part so I put some engine cleaner in it and lots of small nuts in it and bunged up all of the outlets and put it in my mixer for 5 hours. Afterwards the inside looked like new.




I then pressure tested it and found 3 leaks. One was where the oil outlet is soldered on and another was on a soldered seam on the back. Both easy fixes.









The third leak was between the petrol and oil halves. I decided to line the petrol part.



I will see how these tanks hold up. If they start leaking again then I will buy new ones.


I will try to do some more updates over the next few days.

[TechNoir]

Re: 1920 "F" Project

The build has progressed fairly smoothly without too many hitches so I will just highlight a couple of issues that I have had

You may remember that I asked about how the controls worked and it turned out that I had a few parts missing. These bits arrived in the post



I couldn’t get a bell crank bracket so I knew that I needed to make one but I hadn’t expected that the new mounting bracket on the top of the rear cylinder would be wrong so I would need to make one myself.







When fitting the internal brake band the guide pin snapped off. The band had been relined but I was able to uncover the outside of the band and make a new pin and rivet it on.








After fitting the band I found that the new brake drum was binding. When I checked the dimensions of the new drum against the original one the new one was found to have significantly thicker walls than the original so I had to skim it.




John

[TechNoir]

Re: 1920 "F" Project

Whilst on the subject of brakes I cut this shape out of some steel sheet



Then filed and bent it.



So that I could mount one of these on it.



Here it is in place. It is fairly unobtrusive and no original parts have been altered to fit it. The microswitch was £2.50 for 10 of them so £0.25 each (about $0.30 each). I will have to see how durable they are but they are so cheap I am not too bothered if I have to replace them occasionally.







John

[TechNoir]

Re: 1920 "F" Project

I am told that speedometers were not a common accessory and the Johns Manville speedo was much more uncommon than the Corbin. I have a J-M speedo which I have mentioned before but it is not i great condition.

I am led to believe that it is similar to the speedo fitted to the Model T so probably not that uncommon when not fitted to a H-D. Here is my original one.




Terry Marsh was kind enough to provide a replacement part. It seems to be a car derived part and has a broken drive shaft but thats OK because the guts of mine are OK, its the pot metal casting inside the body that I need. The pot metal is held tightly in the body and I would not want to try to remove it because I dont think it would come out in 1 piece so I need to use the replacement body also.



Shaft removed



And compared to my unbroken one.



These 3 brackets need to be removed because they are not needed on a motorcycle mounted speedo.



You can see here where I have carefully removed the spot weld. Also you will notice the motorcycle body has a drain hole so I drilled one of those.



Another difference was that the replacement body has an odometer reset that is spring loaded. My original one was fixed in one position.



The final difference (or so I thought) was the captive nuts on the motorcycle body for the mounting bracket. You can se that mine was originally nickel plated.



John

[TechNoir]

Re: 1920 "F" Project

Then it was a simple reassembly job. These ball bearings fit into tiny cup and cones and were a bit fiddly. I didnt take a picture of them on reassembly but here they are before I took my original one apart. There is a bearing at each end of the shaft.





I then realised that there is one final difference between the 2 speedo cases. You might not spot it in the first picture below but the second and third should show it.







The clearance between the mounting hole in the pot metal and the end of the trip reset gear is different. This fouls the rest of the speedo when you try to fit it so I had to remove the gear and remove some pot metal. I didnt take any pictures of the other bits going together but it was just 3 screws and then the bezel.



Its a very simple instrument and seems to work OK although I dont know how accurate it is.



Other than that, as I said above all things went fairly smoothly.

Here is the bike a couple of hours ago.



The bike is nearly done. I still have one or 2 small jobs to do but it starts and runs. I need to set up the fuelling and dial in the oil feed. plus finish ageing the new paint on the right hand tank. Repair one of the foot boards and fit a horn. I am sure that once I put some miles on it I will have lots of adjustments to make.

The first quick ride up the road was an adventure. I had not paid too much attention to adjustment of the clutch and gear shift and realised that I could only just disengage the clutch with the pedal on the floor. Couple that with me having never ridden a bike with a foot clutch and hand gearchange before. It certainly woke me up!

John

[TechNoir]

Hi folks. Well it stopped raining on Sunday so I had intended to put some miles on the bike and dial in the carb. I did one short run and then couldnt restart the bike because the carb was flooding. It has an original cork float so I guess it was not sealed (no mention of sealing it in the build report) and it now must have soaked up enough petrol to be less buoyant than it should be. A new float in modern material is on its way.

I did a few other jobs and reflected on some of the things I have learnt. I am not the first person to notice these but I thought I would mention them anyway. In no particular order.

1. Not everything in the original documentation is correct. The spoke length is stated to be the same for both wheels in the parts book. No it isnt, the front hub is smaller so the spokes need to be longer.

2. It vibrates. I have already lost 2 fasteners. I need to check them all again and take some precautions against losing any more.

3. Some people say that clincher tyres dont need tyre levers to fit or remove. Maybe those people dont need them but I do.

4. Lots of fasteners have non standard pitches. You need a lathe if you dont want to get held up because of odd fasteners.

5. Most parts seem to be available, you could almost build a bike with repop parts. However the quality is variable. Some parts are great, others are not so great.

6. Buying parts from the USA if you live in the UK is expensive. Shipping plus import taxes can double the cost or even more. Also, because of point 5 above it is often not worth sending small parts back. You learn to just suck it up and move on.

7. Whilst these bikes are not too uncommon in the USA they are much less so in the UK so this forum has been invaluable and I have a huge debt of gratitude to everyone who has helped me out.

John

[kiwi tibbs]

Great thread John, can't wait to here it running.

[TechNoir]

I installed the new float today, set it to the height as per the manual. Unfortunately it is still flooding (although not as much). There is petrol dripping off the bottom of the carb with it just sat on the drive. The needle seems to be a brass cone, is it OK to reseat it? I was thinking of a bit of grinding paste and lapping the needle to the seat. What do those experienced with these Scheblers recommend?

John

[T. Cotten]

I installed the new float today, set it to the height as per the manual. Unfortunately it is still flooding (although not as much). There is petrol dripping off the bottom of the carb with it just sat on the drive. The needle seems to be a brass cone, is it OK to reseat it? I was thinking of a bit of grinding paste and lapping the needle to the seat. What do those experienced with these Scheblers recommend?

John

John!

I am only a student of these things, but the original floatvalve needle points were not brass, more like something like Monel. Normally the top of the seat is cut flat, and a proper fresh needle is burnished to it, piloted by the floatlever.
Beware that common lapping compounds tend to embed into brass and bronze. Flowers of sulphur is a last resort.
(Tobacco ashes are little more than a burnishing lubricant, preventing immediate galling of similar metals.)

Normally the valve is tested by assembling the float to spec, and then flipping it upside down to suck upon the inlet.
They can be testy.

Beware also of some modern floats that are quite heavy.

Good luck!

....Cotten

[TechNoir]

Thanks for the tips Cotten. I will avoid lapping compounds and try something else, brass polish perhaps.

John

[Steve Swan]

My needle was leaking ever so little, so i used a pin vise to hold the needle and Simichrome for gently lapping the needle in the seat that is part of the bowl.

Having the brass bowl removed, i sealed the large center hole with a rubber plug, attached clear fuel line to the bowl inlet and tank tap, positioned the bowl inside a plastic container and turned on the tap. this way i could bench test/monitor the rate of leakage past the needle/seat before i started the first lapping cycle and after finishing each lapping cycle. Having the bowl off the carb in this manner, i could also observe the float action in it's rise to it's working level as gasoline filled the bowl. (fwiw, as Tom pointed out, i was a bit surprised to note seat of the bowl being perfectly flat, having no taper. That being said, the design of the seat made very clear the miniscule amount of surface area the seat gives the needle in actual operation.)

After each lapping cycle, usually 10-15 gentle pressure lapping rotations and keeping the needle taper loaded with Simichrome, i would install needle in seat and test for leakage. To make lapping easiest, i held the bowl in the vise, the jaws covered with a folded shop rag; this way both my hands could give full attention to holding/spinning the pin vise in as perfectly an upright/parallel relation to the inlet, so the needle valve's entire circumference met with the entire seating circumference of the bowl seat.

What i found during the lapping process, is i could put a reasonable amount of pressure on the needle and after probably around 20 lapping repetitions i had a needle/seat valve combination that would hold gas from passing through the valve when sitting over night, actually for over 2 days. the whole lapping process took me probably over 3 hours, but it was worth the results.

The shaft of my original Schebler needle is brass, the actual valve taper around the brass shaft and i am certain, as Tom says, is made of Monel metal. fwiw, new needle/seat combinations, currently available as after-market parts, also leak. some of these after market needles are all brass and others are advertised as stainless.

i hope this is helpful, John, you asked for experience from those with Schebler's, i am not that person. However, i did learn this bench testing procedure working in a shop, reconditioning 20-40 year old crusty Kehin and Mikuni 4 cylinder carb setups.

[T. Cotten]

So Steve!

How much fair time should one charge for the operation?

....Cotten
PS: The monel-tipped needles I get are phenomenal, and worth the minimal extra expense.
Attached on the left is some horrible hardware that a customer just sent for G models, compared to my trusted supplier's on the right. Note the crooked 'cone'!
As so many have said: If they are going to the trouble to reproduce a part, why not make it right?

[Steve Swan]

So Steve!

How much fair time should one charge for the operation?

....Cotten
PS: The monel-tipped needles I get are phenomenal, and worth the minimal extra expense.
As so many have said: If they are going to reproduce a part, why not make it right?

Ha ! I consider any reply you make to any of my posts, an honor, Tom ! I SINCERELY MEAN THAT !!! yes, i understand what you say. to go to the time and expense of making a part and not making it same as original.......

[TechNoir]

Re: 1920 "F" Project

Steve, thanks for the reply. I will be making a test rig and getting my valve sorted tomorrow morning. Fortunately my time to me (like your time to you) is free so it seems like I need to be patient and just take my time until it is right.

Cotten, the picture that you post does not surprise me. Unfortunately my experience with this bike is that some people sell top quality replacement parts but some sell parts of dubious quality. As you say, why bother cutting corners, you might as well as do it right first time.

I am tantalisingly close so hopefully it wont be long before it runs properly.

John